About Me

Buford C. Terrell
Controlled substances laws and their consequences have been the center of my professional life for over fifteen years. I host a public interest television program in Houston, “Drugs, Crime, and Politics” , produced by the Drug Policy forum of Texas, and have done so for most of its ten-year history. Before my retirement, I taught a seminar, “Controlled Substances Law” for many years at South Texas College of Law.
In this blog I intend to explore the features and consequences of those laws, especially the unintended consequences, and look at the need for, and possibility of, changing them. Don’t expect a lot of breaking news or current events, although there will be some. My approach will be more historical and theoretical. I hope to get a lot of criticism – good, bad, and otherwise – and to start some good, heated discussions.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

The Timing of Social Change

The
Timing of Social Change

How
long does it take for a society to change?Marijuana Prohibition is now seventy-five years old, and War on Drugs
was declared fifty years ago.Federal
marijuana prohibition began in1937, and very quickly, in the mid-forties, Mayor
LaGuardia’s medical commission published it report showing the benign nature of
the plant and recommending legalization.Reform efforts have continued, and even increased in recent years; but
Prohibition still controls.What can be
said about the pace of change and the likelihood of reform in the near future?

The
story of other social reforms may provide clues about the pace at which change
occurs.Commonly, efforts for change
begin slowly, build organization and understanding, start rallying public
support.And then, after decades of
frustration and discouragement, quickly achieve what seems to be overnight
success.

Two
current social issues represent a probable course of social change: same sex
marriage and gun control.Both started
in a somewhat distant past, at first almost invisible, struggled as ignored
minority problems, and then suddenly blossomed into public notice with the
support of a popular majority.

Open
homosexual behavior dates back before the dawn of history and was common in
both classical Greece and the Roman Empire.During the era of a repressive church, it was suppressed into secrecy,
but by the 1890s, gay culture was resurfacing in both Europe and the United
States.In the 1950s, some openly
homosexual groups began to appear, but had no large impact until the Stonewall
Riots and the outbreak of AIDS forced their work into public attention.The first reactions were negative: for
instance, G. H. W. Bush cancelled the marijuana compassionate use program,
fearing that the White House would be blamed for giving marijuana to thousands
of gay AIDs patients.The Supreme Court
upheld laws criminalizing homosexual conduct in Hardwick, 1986, and congress enacted the Defense of Marriage
Act.But things began to change.With Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Bill Clinton
first began to allow gays in the military – as long as they were discrete.But then things changed rapidly.The Court quickly reversed itself and held
laws against homosexual conduct were unconstitutional.Eight states recognized same-sex marriage.The military removed all restriction on
homosexual orientation.Congress
extended the Violence Against women Act to cover violence between same-sex couples.It appears that LGBT community seems likely
in the immediate future.

American
life was riddled by gunfire, often from submachine guns, during alcohol
Prohibition and the Great Depression as criminal gangs ran amok.Congress responded with the Machine Gun Tax
of 1934, which virtually removed automatic weapons from American culture.Most states and some large cities added
statutes controlling the carrying of firearms.Violence remained endemic, but rarely broke out until the 1960s.Then John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin
Luther King, Jr. were assassinated and Ronald Regan was wounded in an attack
that also wounded his press secretary, James Brady.These incidents led to the limited and deeply
flawed assault rifle ban and background check system, which, in turn, was
poorly enforced.In reaction, the
National Rifle Association realigned from being an association of sports
shooter into a strident and absolutist lobbyist for arms manufacturers and
revolutionary extremists.But a series
of highly publicized mass shootings, from Columbine to Virginia Tech to Tucson
to Aurora to Sandy Hook, energized public opinion and will probably lead to a
new round of legislative activism.

Both
of these trends when plotted over time roughly trace a graph known by
statisticians as a “hockey stick curve”: one that goes in an almost flat line
(trending either up or down) for a substantial period of time, makes an abrupt
curve, and then going in the same direction at a greatly increased rate.In other words, nothing much seems to happen
for a long time and then the issue explodes.Both the campaign for women’s rights from Seneca Falls to Hilary Clinton’s
presidential campaign of 2008 and the struggle for racial equality from the
Civil War to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 followed similar trajectories.

Is
the campaign for the rights of marijuana users doing the same?As the mention of the LaGuardia Commission
indicates, resistance to criminalization began very early but remained low-key
for decades.The first major movement
began in the mid-1970s soon after the Controlled Substances was enacted and the
Shaffer Commission Report was published.About a dozen states decriminalized possession of small amounts of
marijuana, and some others reduced possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.In 1996, California was the first state to
allow possession of marijuana for medical use.Now eighteen states and the District of Columbia have done so.Over thirty per cent of the U. S. population
now lives in medical marijuana jurisdictions, and at least two more states look
likely to join in this legislative season.Last year two states legalized marijuana within their borders, and one
or two more may join them this year.More members of congress are talking about marijuana than at any time
previous, and more bills have been filed.

Marijuana
reform has made the hockey-stick turn and major changes should occur
quickly.Look for significant changes in
federal law before the 2016 presidential elections.